Jul 5, 2024
Ideas for incorporating mobile app design inspiration into your process
Learn how to use Mobbin, the largest real-world mobile design inspiration source, in your workflow
As designers, we constantly seek inspiration to ignite excitement for new projects and explore the best-in-class examples of features, UI elements, and flows. Mobile app design presents unique challenges due to limited space and standardized design patterns across iOS and Android.
This post will demonstrate how to improve your design process through comprehensive research and inspiration from mobile app designs, using Mobbin. Mobbin, the largest real-world mobile design inspiration source, offers a vast library of over 300,000 screens from 1,069 iOS, Android, and web apps.
Explore how to integrate mobile app inspiration into your design process with the following themes and categories:
Ethical design considerations
Accessibility considerations
Psychological impact
Competitive analysis
Mood boards and design language development
UI/UX best practices
This image highlights mobile app designs that prioritize transparency around data sharing, user privacy, and easy access to font size and dark mode. The Withings app showcases its transparent use of health data and the options available for sharing this information with healthcare providers or coaches; the Strava app example illustrates the app's approach to making privacy settings clear and accessible to users; the Twitter app highlights giving users access to font-size and dark mode options.
Ethical design considerations
Ethical design in mobile apps involves considering user privacy, avoiding dark patterns, ensuring inclusivity, and promoting sustainability. Studying mobile design inspiration offers some of the best examples.
Privacy
Privacy is concern for many; apps that prioritize privacy are gaining popularity as they are transparent about data usage and provide users with control over their information. By studying these privacy-focused apps, we can learn to build trust with our users by making them feel secure and valued.
Dark patterns
Dark patterns are deceptive design strategies that manipulate users into taking unintended actions, such as making a purchase by mistake or sharing more information than they intended. By recognizing apps that avoid these tactics, we can appreciate the significance of ethical design decisions that honor user choices and promote a favorable digital atmosphere.
Inclusive design
When creating digital products, it’s important to consider the needs of all users, including those with disabilities. Apps prioritizing inclusive design sometimes include useful features such as text-to-speech, adjustable font sizes, and high-contrast color schemes. These design choices ensure that everyone can enjoy a seamless and enjoyable experience regardless of their abilities.
This image showcases mobile apps designed with accessibility in mind, highlighting key features such as high-contrast settings, voice controls, and custom gestures. Spotify is presented with its high-contrast design, while Sonos emphasizes voice commands. Creme demonstrates diverse gesture functionality, and Stoic shows controls that cater to high-contrast and dyslexic-friendly fonts.
Accessibility considerations
When designing mobile apps, accessibility features for inclusive design are essential. These features can include voice control, color contrast and typography adjustments, gesture customization, and screen reader optimization. Incorporating these features is both an enhancement and a necessity, helping to bridge the gap between technology and its users.
Voice control integration
Voice commands integrated into mobile apps can be a game-changer for accessibility, especially when you’re on the move. Imagine navigating through an app without using your hands while walking or cooking, for instance. Apps that integrate voice control make life easier for everyone and are particularly useful for users with physical disabilities. By allowing users to interact with apps using their voice, they transform the user experience from tapping and swiping to speaking, making the digital world more accessible.
Color contrast and typography
Mobile screens come in all sizes, and users view them in various lighting conditions. Apps that use high-contrast color schemes and readable fonts are more usable. Such design choices are particularly helpful for people with vision impairments. They can make a big difference between a frustrating experience and a smooth one. By paying attention to details, designers can make content comfortable to engage with, even on small screens, for all users, regardless of their vision capabilities.
Gesture customization
Customizable gestures enhance mobile accessibility significantly. Users can modify gestures according to their physical needs or preferences, enabling apps to cater to a broader range of individuals. In the mobile context, flexibility is essential, and standard solutions may not always be sufficient. Mobile apps become more inclusive by modifying swipe sensitivity or enabling alternative gestures for common actions.
This image showcases mobile app designs that boost motivation, promote healthy habits, and simplify choices. Headspace rewards your meditation streak, Duolingo motivates with badges, Waterllama makes hydration fun with cheerful reminders, and Kitchen Stories eases decision-making with neatly organized cookbooks.
Psychological impact
Mobile app designs greatly affect user psychology. They use techniques like positive reinforcement to encourage healthy habits and reduce decision fatigue. Mobile apps can influence behavior, promote well-being, and boost overall satisfaction by including elements like progress trackers, simple decision-making processes, and motivational feedback.
Positive reinforcement
Mobile apps that use positive reinforcement techniques, such as badges or progress trackers, can motivate users by acknowledging their accomplishments. This approach is particularly effective on mobile devices, where fast, engaging interactions are crucial. By celebrating milestones, apps can increase user satisfaction, promote healthy habits, and strengthen user loyalty.
Minimize decision fatigue
Apps that reduce decision fatigue simplify user choices through curated options and clear navigation. For example, a meal planning app suggesting recipes based on dietary preferences helps users make quick, stress-free decisions. This streamlined experience respects users’ time and reduces cognitive load, making apps more user-friendly.
Encourage healthy habits
Apps promoting well-being use design to motivate healthy mental and physical habits. By tracking progress and providing feedback, these apps support users in achieving personal goals, such as regular exercise or mindfulness. Motivational design elements are key in fostering a positive and engaging journey towards better health.
Exploring Mobbin reveals a wealth of visual designs for mood boards or design themes. This approach exposes you to unique apps beyond your usual selection, eliminating the need to download multiple apps for interior views. Highlights from this collection include Nike Training Club, How We Feel, and (Not Boring) Habits.
Mood boards and design language development
Exploring mood boards and creating a design language are key steps in mobile app design. Collecting visual themes, analyzing color schemes and typography, and studying iconography and imagery from different apps offer valuable inspiration.
Visual themes
Creating mood boards that gather visual themes from various apps can be an excellent way to find inspiration during your design process. By collecting and analyzing designs from different mobile apps, you can inspire yourself and your team and use examples to focus on a mood or visual aesthetic that fits your project without starting from scratch.
Color schemes and typography
Exploring various mobile apps’ color schemes and typography offers invaluable insights for developing a cohesive design language. Focusing on combinations that boost readability and engagement is crucial, especially considering the smaller screen sizes of mobile devices. Effective use of colors and fonts not only lends to the aesthetic appeal of an app but also ensures it’s user-friendly and accessible.
Iconography and imagery
Mobile design inspiration is a great way to explore different iconography and imagery styles that align with an app’s brand and purpose. As you explore, you can investigate finding the right tone and creating a memorable user experience for your app. By studying how successful apps use visual elements to communicate with their audience, designers can gain valuable insights into effective visual storytelling.
Discovering industry-leading apps on Mobbin is ideal for exploring and evaluating design patterns tested by millions of users. Featured examples include Google Maps, WhatsApp, Nike Training Club, and Airbnb.
Competitive Analysis and Benchmarking
Conducting a competitive analysis is helpful when designing a mobile app. By looking at successful apps, designers can spot key design patterns and innovative features that make these apps stand out.
Industry Leaders
Certain design patterns and innovative features emerge when looking at the most successful apps in various industries. By recognizing these patterns, designers can better comprehend what distinguishes an app in its market and how to include these characteristics in their own projects to enhance user engagement and satisfaction.
Feature Comparison
Comparative analysis of features across apps provides insights into user preferences and functionality gaps in the market. This process helps identify unique value propositions and ensures that your app offers something distinct or superior to what’s already available.
This image illustrates feedback and error handling for an Airbnb signup form, a clear service disruption notification in the Klarna app, effective navigation and free trial progress by Monarch, and expectation setting from Headspace.
UI/UX Best Practices
Navigation Patterns
Effective mobile app design hinges on intuitive navigation, allowing users to find features and content without frustration. Good apps use user-friendly designs, like bottom navigation bars for easy thumb access or swipe gestures that mimic natural movements. Studying these patterns can give you valuable ideas for designing navigation and interactions.
Interactive Elements
User engagement is a critical factor in maintaining users’ interest. Interactive elements are an effective means of achieving this goal. Interactions may include touch-responsive animations and dynamic content that reacts to user input. By observing how leading mobile apps incorporate interactivity, you can get inspired to create a more engaging and unforgettable experience for your users.
Feedback and Error Handling
Effectively communicating feedback and errors is crucial in product design. A well-designed app should inform users of the outcome of their actions, whether successful or not, through clear messages and visual cues. These types of communications not only reduce user frustration but also help to maintain trust. Exploring how other mobile apps provide feedback and error communication may inspire improvements for your own app.
Simplification and Minimalism
Simplicity is an important principle in mobile app design. It enhances usability by removing unnecessary elements. A minimalist approach, focusing on essential elements and functionality, can help achieve simplicity. A minimalist strategy simplifies the interface, prioritizes content, and highlights key features. You can draw inspiration from minimalist apps to streamline your design for better accessibility and user-friendliness.
